Book Study: Sherman Alexie, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian"

Foreword “I was born with water on the brain.” The opening line from a masterful work by a genius storyteller. The other night I thought I’d try reading this book out loud to my nine-year-old son. The copy we have is worn and dog-eared, a first edition bought only a few days after it was published in 2007. At the time I didn’t yet have a son, and my daughter was still very young. I had bought Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for myself, having already, before it was published, heard how amazing it was. With that opening line, Alexie brought me into the world of Junior—struggling artist, ballplayer, survivor of two very different kinds of education. And inside Junior’s world, I was awakened to life on the reservation—meeting people and finding myself in situations I had never imagined. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, who has written extensively about the importance of children’s literature, talks about how books can be both mirrors and windows—mirrors in which re